[WARNING: this is likely only to be of interest to my fellow Libertarians (not only is all politics local, most of it is intra-party!) and to those who are morbidly obsessed with me. The rest of you are better off skipping over to the right menu and picking out some nice chicken postings :)]I am active with the Libertarian Party of NC, both at the county and state levels. I worked with Michael Badnarik's presidential campaign and help moderate a list of people working on ideas to grow the LP. Other than the list and helping out with the Badnarik campaign in NC, I have stayed away from national LP politics. We have a lot of work to do here. I do try to stay aware of what's going on nationally, and the rumblings of the reformist and/or 'neolibertarians' I find disquieting, but the LP has been around a lot longer than I've been politically active, and these "Let's disguise ourselves as statists to get the votes of statists" types have apparently always been with the Party, so I don't let that get to me (much).
So. All this is prelude to an interesting conversation I had via instant message today. And here's more prelude: There's a young fellow from Florida who will occasionally message me to ask me about running for office or supporting some candidate he likes or whatever. So far, so good - except that he insists on popping up and insulting Badnarik even after I've explained why I liked Mike as a candidate enough to work for his campaign. Even that wasn't so bad until he started pushing his hopeful for the LP pres nomination for '08, and when I demurred (I think the guy is a horrible choice for the Party) he became insulting and left, promising to annoy me regularly in the future. Oh, well; we all have our off days, as I myself well know.
So today the kid pops up and offers his new plan to revitalise the LP and wow the voting public: "Operation Fist of Freedom". The name itself is a monstrosity - it smacks more of Bushist you'll-be-free-or-else than libertarian non-iniation of force - but branding aside it's a misguided idea. Ambitious, yes, and not without some merit, but premature at best. His idea is to have a Libertarian candidate for every race in 2008 - every race in the COUNTRY, mind you. I'm not going to spend time running the idea down, but I will say that not even the Ds or Rs accomplish this (0f course thanks to gerrymandering, they don't HAVE to... but that's another story). And of course there's the fact that because of ballot access hurdles that need attention now it's not even likely to be technically possible.
Anyway, the punch line is this part of the exchange:
Him: a candidate for every race in 2008 is the goal
Me: in the country?
Him: yes - I call it Operation Fist of Freedom
Me: be careful not to sarcifice quality for quantity
Him: true, but you have to admit, alot of LP members are not quality
Me: Umm, OK, so why do you want to encourage them to run for office?
Him: to raise the bar of debate
Him: 2008 is going to be the biggest election in long time, we have to fully partcipate 110% - we won't get an opportunity like this for a long time
It pretty much deteriorates from there. Aside from the 'biggest election in a long time' nonsense (isn't that what people said the LAST election, and the one before it, and the one before THAT? You'd think people would eventually catch on!) and the "110%" business-speak silliness, how is drafting a bunch of people you think are 'not quality' to represent your ideas going to advance them at all? How can the 'bar of debate' be raised by a bunch of sub-par candidates? It's just not logical!
Let me make clear here that I do not agree with this fellow's assesment of 'a lot' of LP members as 'not quality'. I think every person who has thought about politics enough to explore third parties and has decided that the LP most suits them has displayed some qualities I can admire. However, that doesn't make them all spectacular candidates or spokespeople for the Party.
Ah, well. Everyone does what they can for the cause. I do appreciate the effort and energy he's showing; I just wish it could be redirected into more profitable projects.
¶ 4:03 PM
